Marco Pantani came to the 1999 Giro in absolutely scintillating condition. When the Giro hit the high mountains he was even more dominating than in 1998. At the end of the second of the three Dolomite stages Pantani had a firm grip on the lead. On the morning of the penultimate stage Pantani was ejected from the Giro after a blood test revealed he had a hematocrit above the allowed 50%.

Ivan Gotti's third place in the last mountain stage earned him the lead and the 1999 Giro d'Italia.

This excerpt is from "The Story of the Giro d'Italia", Volume 2. If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book, either print or electronic. The Amazon link here will make either purchase easy.

Starting in Agrigento in Sicily, the 1999 Giro route made its way north, mostly on the Adriatic side. When it hit Le Marche, the race headed west for a trip into the Alps, then east across Italy into the Dolomites for the final drama in the high mountains. The drama in the high Dolomites did decide the race, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The race was made for climbers. Or perhaps, a climber. The most popular sportsman in Italy, by a wide margin, was Marco Pantani and a second Giro win for the Pirate would send the tifosi into delirium. With five hilltop finishes and a large serving of mountains, it looked like Pantani’s race to lose. His spring looked good with a win in the Vuelta a Murcia and a third place in the Giro del Trentino.

The problems uncovered by the Festina scandal remained unresolved and two riders with hematocrits over 50 percent were not allowed to start.
The first day’s racing under the hot Sicilian sun was slow. Ivan Quaranta took the first stage with some smart sprinting, becoming the first Pink Jersey. Cipollini won the second stage and the lead, followed by Jeroen Blijlevens doing the same in the third stage.

After a trip up the instep of the Italian boot, the Giro hit its first hilltop finish in stage five. José “Chepe” González, Andrea Peron and Danilo Di Luca were able to escape early in the ascent of Monte Sirino. Zülle, back to racing after serving his suspension because of his part in the Festina affair, was driving the pack, trying to close the gap.

During the last five kilometers of the climb, Di Luca and González took turns attacking each other, really hard, resulting in Peron’s dispatch. Close to the top González dropped Di Luca and took the stage win. Laurent Jalabert and Pantani, leading the first chase group, just made contact with Di Luca at the line. With the first hint of who was here to race, the General Classification had taken this shape:
1. Laurent Jalabert
2. Danilo Di Luca @ 7 seconds
3. Davide Rebellin @ 14 seconds
4. Paolo Savoldelli @ 16 seconds
5. Marco Pantani @ same time

In fact, Pantani was feeling super. Pantani and his team took advantage of the windy weather by making an attack that split the field so badly that half the peloton never regained contact. Excellent riders like Pascal Richard, Richard Virenque and Roberto Heras were caught napping and lost anywhere from two and a half to over seven minutes.

The next morning, the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) sent technicians to make unannounced blood and urine tests on riders of three teams. As usual, the riders screamed bloody murder, complaining about “unhygienic” conditions. Perhaps the riders feared a competent authority performing the tests rather than the toothless UCI. Pantani led the usual call for a strike that was silenced by the team directors who said that CONI was within its rights. Further angering the rest of the peloton, the owner of the Mapei team said his team was happy to work with CONI. The other riders were so incensed they reduced Mapei team member Andrea Tafi, one of the finest riders of his time, to tears with their taunts and insults. Two of the riders tested in the CONI blitz were positive for dope. From inside their doping-culture bubble, the riders couldn’t see how sick their attitude was.

Pantani, Jalabert, Cipollini, and Oscar Camenzind held a press conference and said that if the CONI intruded any further upon the testing regimen, which heretofore had been the responsibility of the UCI, they would stop racing. Camenzind tested positive for EPO in 2004 and retired after receiving a two-year suspension.

The stage eight ascent to a hilltop finish at Gran Sasso in Abruzzo was ridden in near freezing rain. Once on the climb, Pantani’s team drove hard, catching all of the early breakaways. Not content with dropping Pink Jersey Jalabert and most of the rest of the peloton, Pantani put his hands on the drops and headed for the sky. He didn’t jump hard. He just got out of the saddle and rode the peloton off his wheel. The last man on Pantani’s wheel was Ivan Gotti, who looked perfectly miserable.

As he climbed, Pantani looked back at Gotti and yelled at him to pull through, but Gotti was suffering all the tortures of Hell just hanging on, and taking a pull with Pantani while he was in full flight was probably beyond any rider in the world. Finally Gotti did go to the front and the pair predictably slowed. Enough of that! Pantani shot away and, clearly not sparing the watts, put lots of time between himself and everyone else.

Pantani came in alone, and to the joy of his ecstatic fans, became the leader of the 1999 Giro d’Italia. Scattered behind him, anywhere from a half to a full minute, were the other Giro hopefuls: José Maria Jiménez, Gotti, Dario Frigo and Alex Zülle.

Jalabert, a former time trial world champion, won the 31-kilometer time trial at Ancona in Le Marche. Pantani also blistered the course, coming in third, only 55 seconds slower than the Frenchman. Jalabert took back the lead, being ahead of Pantani by one-tenth of a second.

This extraordinary time-trial ride of Pantani’s began setting off bells and whistles among the more clear-eyed racing fans. Pantani, a light, small racer, weighed only 125 pounds (57 kilograms). His climbing was remarkable because his power relative to his weight was astonishing. But to continue to believe this small man could naturally generate sufficient wattage to drive his bike fast enough in time trials to challenge the larger, heavier chrono specialists required a suspension of rational doubt.

The next day CONI officials showed up to perform more blood tests on riders. UCI boss Hein Verbruggen had earlier told the riders they didn’t have to submit to the tests. Only riders from the Mapei team gave samples. Gotti, among others refused.

At Cesenatico, Pantani’s hometown, the Giro finished stage eleven and started stage twelve. The only change to the standings was that Jalabert won an intermediate sprint and now had a four-second lead on Pantani.

The UCI performed blood tests and found nothing amiss. But La Gazzetta knew about the “surprise” tests in advance and published the names of teams who would be tested. The riders and their handlers knew how to reduce a rider’s hematocrit in advance of a test. They would take saline solution injections along with aspirin and in no time the hematocrit was within the legal limit.

Stage thirteen came before the only rest day, taking the Giro over the Apennines to Rapallo on the Ligurian coast. Even though the roads were tough, there was no change to the top of the leader board. Jalabert hung on to his Pink Jersey by just four seconds, saying he knew he’d have to give up the lead when the Giro faced the first real day in the mountains.

Jalabert didn’t have to wait long for the roads to rise. The first stage when the racing resumed was into the Piedmontese Alps. Paolo Savoldelli, soon to be nicknamed Il Falco Bergamasco (“The Falcon of Bergamo”, his hometown), took off on the final climb, the Madonna del Coletto, and then used his breathtaking descending skills to carve a path ahead of everyone else to Borgo San Dalmazzo. Just behind him, the trio of Pantani, Daniel Clavero and Gotti arrived. Pantani was again the maglia rosa.

Set ’em up and I’ll knock ’em down. That seemed to be Pantani’s motto when he destroyed the peloton on the climb to Oropa, a 1,180-meter-high mountain west of Milan. Hoping for a stage win, Jalabert had gone early with Roberto Heras and Nicola Miceli. His fellow breakaways weren’t going fast enough, so Jalabert dropped them. Eight kilometers from the summit, Pantani looked to have a jammed chain. He was an excellent mechanic and without any sign of panic, performed the repair himself.

While he was stopped, attacks started going off the front, the pace of the race at that point being white hot. Savoldelli tried to orchestrate a fair play slowdown rather than take advantage of Pantani’s mechanical. Pantani’s teammates waited for their leader and pulled him up to the peloton. Pantani relentlessly made his way through the scattered riders, even blowing by Roberto Heras, a fine climber. Now only Jalabert was away and with three kilometers to go, Pantani overtook him, winning the stage by 21 seconds.

There were four important stages left: the stage eighteen time trial followed by three high mountain stages in the Dolomites. Jalabert said he hoped to regain the lead in the time trial but felt he was really racing for second place because Pantani would take so much time out of him in the remaining mountain stages.
Jalabert couldn’t do it. He was only able to pull 57 seconds out of the Pirate. Savoldelli, however, turned in a wonderful ride, coming in second to Gontchar and beating Jalabert by 24 seconds. That left Pantani the leader by 44 seconds over Savoldelli and 69 seconds over Jalabert. Tight race.

From here on there would be no good news for Jalabert. The next stage ended at the top of Alpe di Pampeago, eight kilometers of ten-percent gradient with a stretch that tilts to sixteen percent. On the penultimate climb, Passo Manghen, Pantani had his men turn the screws and at the crest of the Manghen there were only twelve left in the maglia rosa group. Savoldelli tried a suicide descent but couldn’t get enough time to distance himself once the Pampeago ascent began. Midway up the Pampeago, Jalabert was dropped. Gotti looked awful while Gilberto Simoni looked cool and at the front, Stefano Garzelli was doing yeoman’s work for the teammate on his wheel, Pantani.

About four kilometers from the summit, Heras attacked and drew Pantani. Pantani waited a few seconds before countering with a display of climbing power that was simply unbelievable, showing that no one could climb a mountain on a bike like he could. Gilberto Simoni was the first chaser in at 67 seconds, his ride confirming his promise as a coming talent in Grand Tour racing.

At this point Pantani was leading in the Points, Mountains and the General Classifications. After the Alpe di Pampeago stage the General Classification was thus:

Stage twenty was a hilltop finish at Madonna di Campiglio. Before the riders started the stage, fifteen of them were required to submit to blood tests. All were deemed clean and good, giving everyone a high degree of confidence that the Giro would not be facing any more doping troubles. It was on the final kilometers of that mountain that the real action occurred. With fifteen kilometers to go, Pantani came out of the peloton and exploded off the front.

Again, the rest of the best cyclists in the world could only watch and limit their losses as best they could. The Pirate was well and truly gone. The first group came in as the day before, 67 seconds later. Pantani’s performance in this Giro so far had been absolutely masterful.

The next day’s stage—number twenty one—promised only more of the same for a peloton riding under Pantani’s tyranny. Leaving from Madonna di Campiglio, where stage twenty had ended, it was to be the tappone with the Tonale, Gavia, Mortirolo, Valico di Santa Cristina and a hilltop finish at Aprica. Surely Pantani, who had so far won four stages in the Giro, would again have his way with the other riders.
That morning in Madonna di Campiglio, Marco Pantani was awakened in his hotel room so that a blood test could be administered. His hematocrit of 52 percent resulted in his being ejected from the Giro. The effect of his squalificato was profound. The cycling world was stunned. Pantani partisans were sure that some sort of conspiracy was afoot to deny Italy’s most popular sportsman a second Giro victory. It was said that this was a giallo (yellow, an Italian idiom meaning something with dark conspiratorial undertones) case. It hit cycling fans far harder than the 1998 Festina scandal because of Pantani’s heroic image and the adoration the tifosi had for him. He had triumphed over what should have been a crippling accident and had stuck with and won the Tour de France in its deepest most troubling time. Distraught, the rest of the Mercatone Uno team packed and left the Giro as well.

Nearly all Italians expressed disbelief that Pantani would have taken any performance enhancing drugs. Almost to a man, racers lined up to express their support for the expelled rider and a belief in the cleanliness of his bloodstream. How many of them actually believed what they were saying is difficult to know, but I suspect damn few.

Pantani knew the night before that he was going to be subjected to a blood test in the morning. Like many pros of the era (two-thirds of the 1998 Festina squad owned battery-powered centrifuges so that they could “manage” their hematocrits) he had his own centrifuge and tested himself before going to sleep, satisfied with his 48.6 percent hematocrit. Riders who do not manipulate their blood have no need of a personal centrifuge.

Always trying to do damage to the drug testing programs, riders and managers cynically expressed criticism over the reliability of the hematocrit test. In fact Pantani’s blood was tested twice and after it was shown to have a high hematocrit, three more tests were performed in the presence of Pantani’s team doctor and team director Giuseppe Martinelli. Averaging the five tests gave a result of 53 percent. The rules, allowing for a margin of error, require that the average be reduced a point. Thus, Pantani’s 52 percent.

The doctors who had performed the tests on Pantani’s blood retested the samples when they returned to their hospital in Como. The Carabinieri later seized the samples and delivered them to yet another doctor for testing. The results remained unchanged. Later DNA tests were done to certify that the blood samples were indeed Pantani’s. They were.

Pantani was distraught. When told the news he smashed out a window in his hotel room. He then quietly returned home. After a few days he held a short press conference where he forcefully asserted his complete innocence. He said that on his way home he had a blood test performed and the hematocrit reading was 48 percent, dreadfully high, but legal.

To me the entire affair has a sense of mystery about it. We’ve seen there were standard procedures teams used to lower a rider’s hematocrit. The team knew Pantani was going to be tested in the morning. They even knew the time. Why wasn’t his hematocrit brought down before the test? The team doctor spent much of the evening and early morning before the test at a disco, which Pantani’s agent Manuela Ronchi thought strange given the importance of the coming stage. The test was administered a little after 7:30 in the morning, but the doctor, who so far has refused to discuss that day, didn’t show up until after nine (although in one statement, he said he delivered Pantani to the testers but didn’t stay while Pantani’s blood was extracted because he went to get another rider, Marco Velo). It has been asserted that without medical assistance Pantani couldn’t use the normal methods of achieving a short-term reduction in his hematocrit. Yet, on other teams, even the soigneurs knew how to put a bag of saline into a racer to get a temporary three-point reduction in a rider’s hematocrit. Willy Voet wrote it was part of pro cycling’s standard operating procedure and took about 20 minutes to do the job, which probably explains why Pantani was habitually late to his blood tests that require the rider to show up within ten minutes of being called. The conflicting accounts make it hard to understand exactly what happened that morning. But whether he didn’t think he needed help to cheat the tests, based on his previous evening’s hematocrit, or he just didn’t have a technician available, he was a goner.

I’ve noted that Pantani’s girlfriend has described him as having a severe inferiority complex and he was later clinically diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His actions from that day at the Madonna di Campiglio and the tragic events that fill the few years left to him can be explained by those insights. Falling from the extraordinary heights to which he had risen, the most adored sports personality in Italy, to doper hounded by the law, was a descent that his fragile ego was unable to handle while his manic-depressive tendencies made his impulsive tendencies all the worse.

The racers didn’t threaten to strike this time. Many riders were tested that day and only Pantani’s hematocrit was above the allowable level.

With Pantani booted, the next three places in the General Classification were close together in time, close enough that the queen stage would probably decide the winner. Savoldelli was now the leader, but he refused to wear the Pink Jersey.

After the Tonale and Gavia, the riders were together at the beginning of the Mortirolo. It was here, just as the gradient began to hurt, that Gotti made his move. Only Simoni and Heras were able to stay with him, Savoldelli and Jalabert chasing as best they could. Eventually the front trio formed a smooth working break and on the Mortirolo, Gotti didn’t look back while he led the other two all the way to the top. The crowds who had wanted to see Pantani ice his Giro victory were huge. There was a banner that summed up the profound emotion of aspiration, joy and hope Pantani made Italian cycling fans feel, “Pirata—farci sognare” (Pirate, make us dream).

Ivan Gotti on the Mortirolo

Savoldelli went over the top 3 minutes 3 seconds behind the leading trio. He went down the technical descent of the Mortirolo hell-bent on getting back on terms with the Gotti group. He caught a strong group of riders on the false flat leading to Aprica and finding their pace not to his liking, dropped them and continued his pursuit. Despite these efforts, he was never able to catch the leaders and finished 4 minutes 5 seconds back.

Heras won the stage and improved his overall position while Simoni was, for now, up to second in the General Classification and Gotti was the new leader and winner of the 1999 Giro d’Italia. Later in the day it was announced that the times had been recalculated and Savoldelli was in second place after all, a single second ahead of Simoni.

Gotti’s victory was not embraced by the Italian public who felt their Marco was the true winner. As Gotti was putting on his new Pink Jersey in Aprica, whistles of derision from the crowd could be heard. Gotti was correct when he said that everyone knew and competed under the same rules, one of which was that racing with a high hematocrit was grounds for disqualification. Gotti said he was racing for second place before the Pirate was sent home because he knew “Pantani is the best and strongest rider in the world.”